On Form and Purpose

This book is rich with imagery and symbolism that seems to appear out of the past. The stories that he finds or is told begin to create this disjointed patchwork of history. It is intentionally delivered to the reader out of order, because it mirrors the way Balakian received the story himself. No one sat him down at a tender age and told him about the Armenian genocide, nor did they tell him the hardships and strength of his family; what they went through, what they go through, and how they got to where they are now.

I feel that the mode of delivery is so important here, and characterizes how many of us come to learn and understand deep complex ideas in general (whether they be personal, historical, cultural, etc.).

I had a professor in undergrad who would tell you stories like you were intimately familiar with characters and events even if you had no idea who or when or where or what the story was about. He would just thrust knowledge upon you in no real order or linear delivery, trusting in the powers of association, not worried if you understood only 10% of what he was saying or who he was reading. It didn't matter that you didn't understand the extent of the story or the poem or the history; he knew and trusted that each piece will build towards the rest of the narrative and eventually link together a deep and interconnected knowledge of a subject.

Though many of my peers felt deep compassion and respect for this professor, we would sometimes joke about his “disjointed” or “ADD” teaching style. It wasn't until recently when thinking about how poetry and even good games allow a reader/player to come to terms with the world that I realized his pedagogical style, intentional or not, embodies what I aspire to in my own teaching and art: trusting your player/reader/student to form their own relationship to the disparate pieces of knowledge you leave them.

I was thinking about him during a discussion in my game studies group. This associative knowledge construction is also a strong component of games. Instead of being limited to the linear delivery of traditional plot points (in fear of “losing” your audience) games have the power to let go of the reins and allow its players to piece things together on their own terms. Yet games can go one step further, feeling more like the form and mode of the Balakian memoir.

Yesterday I finished playing Device 6, an iOS interactive narrative adventure game, which has similarities to the framework of a memoir. The character you are following in third person is slowly understanding why she is dropped in a surreal environment while you the player are along for the ride. That said, you the player have a role in the narrative because your position as an outside observer is referenced within the game (essentially breaking the fourth wall) somewhat like how memoir operates from the present narrating on the past, breaking the fourth wall to come back to the present moment.

I understand this isn’t a very sound connection between game “player” and memoir writer (I think it is much more complex and in some places doesn't really work), but I found Balakian’s memoir more like a game than the last two memoirs; not in its content, but in its mechanics. The reader, like Balakian’s character, obtains small bits of knowledge until it can be pieced together organically in order to fully represent how hard it is to grasp not only the idea of genocide, but also in the more general sense, connecting with your family.

This book made me reflect on how little I know about my own family and their past. The list of unknowns started building:

I don’t know my grandmother’s maiden name. 

I don’t know where my grandfather, or his father, was born or even came from. 

I don’t know what my dad wanted to be when he grew up.

I don’t know anything about my father’s mother who died when he was 6. 

I think my writing has been grasping at all of these things: game mechanics and culture, non-linear narrative construction, and how to connect to something larger than myself. I think it was this quote that really hit home for me. It represents something I only realized about a year or so ago while going through that “what's the worth of writing” crisis.

“I realized that she was my beloved witness, and I the receiver of her story. When I was a boy, she had showered me with love; now as a man, I could return that love.” 195

To return that love through telling, through witnessing, and through writing is something that drives all of my creative work. It gives me purpose. But maybe I am not doing a good enough job. Maybe I need to start pursuing that list a little harder, even if I only collect small pieces now and can only write my Triforce in the future.